Plenty more like this here!

Author Comments

EDIT: Am I seeing things? FRONT PAGE?! And an award for daily 2nd place?! A big thank you to whoever was behind making this decision! I honestly did not expect this to do so well here on NG, simply because I know there's a good few people that don't like MLP here. Needless to say, I'm shocked and yet honored to have this honor. Thank you!

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After about four months of planning, writing, animating and procrastinating (mostly the last one of course, lol), here is the big My Little Pony project I've been working on, which is an animated rendition of the comic on ask-twilightsparkle.tumbl r.com dubbed "True Friendship." Clocking in at almost five minutes (counting the credits), this is my longest animated project yet and also one of my most ambitious.

Rather than do something focused on humor or fast-paced action like most of my recent works, I wanted to make something with a story and do my best to tell it as powerfully as I could throughout the animation. Most of the dream sequence you see here was not in the comic, and was concocted by me and with a little help from the creator of the original comic.

I could go on with how I think some things in it could have turned out much better, such as when full-grown Spike is flying and some of the expressions being a little too funny for this moody animation, but I think I'll keep my mouth shut and let you watch this animation for yourself. I will say though, I'm very happy with how this turned out, especially on the writing and timing front.

I do hope you enjoy the animation! Please let me know what you think of it; I'm all ears!

Reviews

Rated 3.5 / 5 stars2012-03-04 00:30:40

John K. wrote the episode "Son of Stimpy" (the tear-jerker episode of Ren & Stimpy where Stimpy tries to find his lost fart...better than it sounds) simply to prove how easy it is to make a sad cartoon/film. All you have to do is follow a few common filmic tricks and you have your audience crying like babies. So the mood of your animation, while effective, isn't anything out of the ordinary, and isn't nearly enough to compensate for the rather lacking animation and story.

Granted, the artwork & voices are good, but there isn't much to this short other than a drawn-out (and fairly standard) "goodbye" scene. Disregarding the lack of originality, you did accomplish what you set out to do, and did it well. But if you plan on doing more dramatic shorts, try to give them more depth of emotion than this.

Hmm, that's a very interesting observation there. To be honest, that didn't really cross my mind about how easy it could be in creating an emotional story like this.

I did recall though while making this the method of writing Pixar has for their movies. When it came to writing their films (and correct me if I'm wrong here), they had a figured-out method for how to pace everything and what they needed to do in order to get the emotional results they wanted in their projects. Of course, they changed things up to some degree at time went on, but it largely stayed the same for most of their films, and played a big part with how they've managed to keep an emotional pull in almost all of their films, not to mention made the writing a lot easier for the emotional parts. Hearing them talk about this method though practically strips away any and all of the emotional pull the Pixar films have, simply because they all follow this set method on what to do to get the right emotions.

So yes, you would be right about this sharing the qualities about it being a typical "goodbye" scene, you definitely would. Is that any reason though to ignore the messages it provides? I think it's definitely safe to say by your logic the Pixar films all fall into the same category of sad films/cartoons. However, the messages are not only still there, but are also powerful and still meaningful. For example, look at Toy Story 3 (spoilers abound here!) and the ending scene with Andy. It plays out almost like this in a way, with how Andy tells Bonnie about every toy, plays with his toys one last time, then drives off finally leaving Woody and Buzz. The layout of the story is roughly played out the same way here. However, that's not the point: the message is what's most important with the story. I'm all for innovation, but perhaps the way we already know how to convey that message still works the best here.

TL;DR: The story, while doing what's already been done, still works and pulls people in, despite what you say here. I completely agree with trying to make something with a bigger emotional pull next time, or something even completely new, but according to what many people have told me here and other places, they have related to the characters in a powerful way already. Not only that, but many have been picking up the messages it has within and learning from them, which is fantastic. This type of layout for such a story may have been done before, but it still works. Why fix what's not broken?

Regardless, thank you for taking the time to write a review, and sorry for taking so long to get back to you! I will try to do something new and different for the future, whatever it may be, and will keep in mind what you said here.

Rated 3.5 / 5 stars2012-02-29 15:12:04

Honestly though, how would YOU know if Spike gets wings or not? Every other dragon we've seen in the show so far has grown up by being greedy, and Spike has so far grown up through magic and being greedy. Who's to say he won't grow up differently because he's NOT greedy?

I am happy to hear you liked the animation regardless though; it means a lot to me. Thank you for taking the time to make a review here, I do appreciate it!